1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for controlling a video cassette recorder from a personal computer.
2. Description of Related Art
Personal computers have been developed and marketed with the capability to receive and display publicly broadcasted television signals. The broadcasted video images may be displayed in a separate window that allows the user to watch television while performing other operations on the personal computer. It may be desirable to store the television signals in a disk drive of the computer. Analog video signals, once digitized, typically require a large amount of memory space on the disk. For this reason, storing television signals on the disk drive is generally undesirable.
It would be desirable to store the video signals on a mass storage device such as a video cassette recorder (VCR). It would also be desirable to control the operation of the VCR from a personal computer. Video cassette recorders are typically located in a different room than the personal computer. Therefore a system that controls a video cassette recorder through a personal computer would require routing a plurality of cables between the VCR and the computer. Routing cables can be both expensive and time consuming. It would be desirable to provide a system that allows a personal computer to remotely control the operation of a video cassette recorder.